


Blackouts and White Cats

by Of_Princes_and_Savages



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blackouts, F/M, First Kiss, I attempted British English, lots of other characters mentioned at the least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-05-31 20:22:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15127145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Of_Princes_and_Savages/pseuds/Of_Princes_and_Savages
Summary: Harry Goodsir hasn't quite gotten around to meeting everyone in his building yet, just a few people, but no cats. Until today. When he has to find who the cat belongs to during a power outage caused by this snowstorm. Hmm.





	Blackouts and White Cats

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lafiametta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lafiametta/gifts).



In the past few months he'd lived in the building, Harry knew the names of exactly four people. Not counting Thomas Jopson, his roommate, a bright-eyed young man who kept their place neat as a pin. Harry was a bit more of an introvert than an extrovert, to start with, but he was also a young surgeon trying to win a resident position at the hospital and his time was limited.

Well...time not spent crashed on his own bed, snoring, at least.

The people he knew were Francis Crozier, an older man who had a big black dog named Neptune that Thomas would walk for him. He was equal parts private, surly, and seemingly done with 99% of humanity on the whole, but not an unkind man. And there was Henry Peglar and John Bridgens, a rather sweet couple upstairs that had a love of reading, and got one of Harry's Amazon book deliveries by mistake because the deliveryman thought it was mislabeled. Harry had yet to get his postal situation straight in this building.

And then there was Silna.

It took Harry three times to finally get an introduction. The first time, they'd only made eye contact, and he was in the middle of trying to get a sofa through the door with Thomas shoving on the other end, wishing they'd brought Edward or Graham or one of their fitter friends along, while Silna came down to check her mail. The second time, she was in the lift when he rode it down to the ground floor, finding himself unable to think of something sensible to say. Like "hi".

He managed to say "hi" the third time he met her, when she held the door for him when his arms were full of groceries. _That_ was the introduction that stuck.

Her name was Silna. She had moved to England from Greenland, in part to pursue her veterinarian degree. She played music at a coffee shop somewhere in the city on Saturdays, she hated the taste of chocolate, loved animals, (she was a vet,) and she was fluent in sign language because her father was mute, (something about his tongue?) and that was his primary mode of communication for all of Silna's life.

Harry had learned a little bit of sign language when he was starting medical school. He thought it could come in handy if he had a deaf patient. But he'd failed to practice it after his second year, when Professor Stanley's demanding courses took up all his time. All he could remember clearly was half of the alphabet, and all of the letters in _Harry_.

But he was always willing to learn new things, so this had led to his becoming Silna's study partner for British Sign Language. (It was a bit daunting to realize different countries had different signs, a foreign language all their own if you will.) He found some resources on the internet to study and she'd sent him a few links, but they were still working out a schedule to meet face to face on the regular. Vets and doctors were similarly busy, but they had exchanged phone numbers. And more than a few texts.

Thomas was wrong, but he seemed to think they were dating. And was _wrong_ , of course. They'd chat in the hall or by the mail boxes of course, met a few times in shops, once they'd crossed paths in a coffee shop so that now Harry knew where she played on Saturday evenings and was pleased to have this weekend off to do so, but they weren't dating. Harry could count on one hand the number of times she'd visited their flat, but those four times she'd come to visit, Thomas had always made himself scarce.

"I didn't want to be a third wheel," he'd explained after Silna left one day, when Harry was scribbling down some rules about sign language sentence structure. "It's just something polite you do for a roommate, you know. Girl is visiting roommate? Take a walk, go to your room and turn on the radio, run an errand, do some laundry-"

"You're _always_ doing laundry." Harry murmured, flipping his notebook shut.

"I _like_ doing laundry." True, Thomas had an actual schedule for clothes, underthings, sheets, and towels that maximized cleanliness and minimized trips down to the basement washing facilities. "And you _like_ Silna."

"Well...yes, but she's a very likeable person." Harry replied slowly. He knew that Silna was uncommonly pretty, and that he enjoyed spending time with her, learning about her, sharing things about himself with her.

But when it came to the idea of sticking a label on the feelings he had for her? Oh boy. That was when things started getting complicated. He was happy being just-friends, pleased with it even, but was it worth risking that for a chance at a girlfriend/boyfriend situation? Harry couldn't remember the last time he went on a date, actually, a _real_ one, that probably wasn't a good omen-

Thomas shrugged, taking Harry out of his mini-spiral of doubt. "Well...for the record, I don't think she'd say no if you did ask her out. I don't pay much attention to people on the floor above the second, but I've never seen her take such a shine to someone else in this building."

The nicest thing about Thomas was that he was a good, honest fellow. Caring. Harry often found he was the friend who lent a listening ear to someone, but he and Thomas went back and forth with each other. He'd support Harry either way with Silna, respect if he wanted to keep being just her friend, or if he tried asking her out.

Their place didn't exactly have a closet he could lock them in, at least...Thomas was caring and all of that, but Harry wouldn't put it past him to lock them in the same room if he didn't make up his mind.

Eventually.

* * *

Mrs. Jopson, Thomas' mother, suffered from chronic pain. She had largely overcome an opioid addiction recently, but the pain still remained, and she was going through a flare when a snowstorm threatened to blanket the city.

Thomas had, therefore, packed up a bag and headed over to her house before the weather got too bad. Harry had helped him pack because otherwise he'd wear out the floorboards worrying over his mother, and Mrs. Jopson would probably fret about her oldest son as well. This way they could all be together, at least, although it did leave Harry behind alone.

With a cat...

It should be noted that, before a quarter to four on the sixteenth of December, Harry Goodsir had never seen this cat before in his life. He'd have remembered it otherwise. It was a mass of fluffy white fur with a swishy tail, so long that when it stood up on it's hindlegs to rattle a doorknob as if it could open it like a person, that the cat's head must have been at least level with Harry's waist.

He'd stepped out of his flat, by then, wondering what was making that noise in the hallway. The power had blacked out maybe ten minutes ago, (he'd still been looking for a torch, squinting in the weak light bleeding through the frost-coated windows,) and it was silent in the building save for the howl of wind outside. He couldn't _not_ hear the rattling noise and the soft thumps that came from the mysterious cat pawing at doors and shaking the knobs.

On the side of a the door where you could see the cat in action, it was almost cute. At least until the owner of the flat threw open the door and swiped a broom through the air with a snarl. Between his shaggy, graying hair and bulldog-like scowl, he was fairly intimidating, and his sudden, violent appearance had Harry nearly jumping out of his socks.

"SHOVE OFF WITH YOU!!"

The cat jumped, tail straight in the air. Then it settled, (unlike Harry's heartbeat,) and fixed the stranger with a look that could only be described as disdainful. As if it were disappointed that the man would be so rude.

On his part, the man just frowned, holding the broom like a war staff and regarding the cat in turn. "Well I wasn't expecting this, I thought it was someone trying to loot flats in the blackout," he grunted, then turned his head to the side. "Great big bastard, isn't it? Is this your beast?"

"Ah...n-no sir." Harry watched the cat slink forward and sniff at the man's feet, then slowly rub it's face against his left shin. The man didn't react. "Um, Harry, Harry Goodsir. I don't suppose you'd know if anyone in the building owns a cat?"

"Thomas Blanky," he nodded, rubbing the bit of beard there on his chin. "There's James Fitzjames downstairs, but I think his is a tabby. You might check the upstairs too, Irving maybe, or the Hartnell boys, the Franklins have a dog I think but it couldn't hurt. Francis' seen someone up there with a cat carrier but I forget who." Mr. Blanky looked down at the feline, at last, and bent down to give it's ears a scratch. "No collar, but too friendly to be a street cat, aren't you?"

The cat purred.

"It's much too cold outside for it to have wandered in," Harry said, crouching down and offering his hand for the cat to sniff. It turned reluctantly away from the hand that gave it pets to give his fingers a sniff, finding them sufficent and rubbing up on them. "I'll go upstairs and ask around, maybe he slipped out."

"I'll check downstairs," Mr. Blanky volunteered, putting his broom back inside the door. "No sense in you wandering around all over the building and freezing in a corridor somewhere, wouldn't you say?"

That was fair enough. Harry coaxed the cat a little closer before he scooped it up, grunting at the unexpected weight of the thing. Easily twenty pounds. He wasn't sure he'd ever held a twenty-pound cat before. It didn't help that it just sort of flopped there in his arms, partly bridal-style and partly like cradling a baby, refusing to help support itself.

Oh, he hoped he found the owner soon...

* * *

Harry hadn't had cause to be up on the third floor yet. It looked the same as the second floor, the numbers on the doors were just different. Even the hall carpet was the same indistinguishable color.

He managed to shift the cat so that he could knock, (kicking the door seemed rude,) and at the first door he came face to face with a small, slender redheaded man with an easy smile and pallid skin. Harry recalled once reading that the Greeks believed redheads died and became vampires and wasn't sure why that came to mind. It probably had something to do with that _smile_ on the man's face.

"Hullo there," he grinned beneath a neatly trimmed beard. "Giving away cats?"

"N-no, um, this fellow seems to have wandered away from home, I was just...looking for the owner?"

"'fraid this little fellow isn't mine," the young man said, reaching out to pet the feline's head with a finger. "Pretty thing-FUCK!"

Harry backed up, trying to keep hold of the cat as it hissed upon biting the stranger. No, no it did not like him, okay, next door. Harry muttered a rushed farewell while trying to ignore the claws sinking into parts of his arms, the redhead glowering back at the cat until he shut the door. Well then.

Harry skipped the next door because that was the Bridgens-Peglar home and they were out of town on a vacation before the storm had hit. The one after that had been answered by a matronly woman with blue eyes, who didn't have a cat but Harry could hear a noisy little dog yipping inside somewhere as soon as he knocked. The woman, Mrs. Franklin, explained that as being Jacko, who was in a bit of a snit because Mr. Franklin had gone out before the power had shut down.

In the start of a snowstorm...

He thought Mrs. Franklin had a kind face and appreciated her mentioning the other residents on this floor didn't have cats, so Harry didn't remark on what poor judgment her husband had. He merely wished her a good day and tried the fourth floor.

As with the third floor, he'd never been to the fourth floor. Silna did live up here, though, but Harry didn't know which door was hers. He'd knocked on the first door, of a man with black curly hair messier than Harry's and blue eyes, wearing a thick, warm wool sweater.

"Sorry to bother you, ah, I'm Harry, and I was wondering if you'd lost a cat?" he asked.

The man's mouth was set in a bit of an anxious line at first, but it softened into an odd little smile, shaking his head. "No, sorry. But are you Henry Goodsir by any chance?"

"I...yes. Yes I am."

"I have a letter that's addressed to you, did you know you're the fourth Henry to move into this building? Let me go get it for you."

"Oh. Thank you..." Harry looked when a door across the hall opened, and Silna stepped out with a camping lantern that lit the whole hall with bright white light. She looked at him with obvious surprise, and all he could do was smile sheepishly.

The cat who, by this point, was more than comfortable being carried around in a warm pair of arms, mewled quietly, making Harry feel that much sillier. "I don't suppose you're missing a cat?" he asked, nodding towards the creature.

Silna gave him one of those tiny smiles of hers.

"Actually..."

* * *

The cat's name was Tuunbaq. He'd come with Silna when she moved to England, the runt of the litter her father's cat had unexpectedly had. She hadn't expected the cat to grow as big as he did, or to be as intelligent as he was. He was constantly trying to slip out the door, but today somehow he'd managed it behind her back.

Carrying a cat for someone was an unexpected way to get invited inside, power outage or no. Silna's camping lantern, when sat on the coffee table in front of the sofa, nearly lit up the entire living room. The shadows it cast were somewhat eerie, in fact Tuunbaq had slithered out of sight somewhere as soon as he'd been put down into one of those dark places as Harry found himself seated on the sofa by Silna, talking about who sent the letter Henry Collins recieved.

"It does look like it's for Henry Collins..." Silna said slowly, turning her head to the side as she squinted at the envelope. "Sort of."

"No, no, that's just my brother Robert's handwriting." Harry dropped the letter on the coffee table when she passed it back to him. "He moved to New Zealand after medical school."

"Oh? He's a doctor too?"

"No, ah, actually he dropped out in his final year, and moved to live on a sheep farm. He's a sheep farmer." Harry chuckled, rubbing his chilled hands together. "Dad was furious he wasn't even going to practice veterinarian medicine."

Silna picked up a polar fleece blanket that had been shoved to one side of the sofa. She must have been wrapped in it reading the open book on the table before she went looking for Tuunbaq. Harry pulled part of the blanket over his lap and crossed his legs, feeling slightly conscious of how intimate it felt when Silna did the same, smoothing the blanket out on her lap.

"Medicine is a big thing in your family?" she asked, and it took Harry a minute to process her question.

"Ah...sort of. Yeah, you could say that. My grandfather, father, and oldest brother are all Doctor John Goodsir's,-not junior or anything, just _John Goodsir_ all the way around,-and Archie just started studying to be a surgeon, there's me, an uncle or two I think...yeah, lot of doctors. Only one sheep farmer though." Harry was keenly aware he was about to start rambling, or rather more so, and twiddled his thumbs while looking around the flat for something to change the topic.

Silna had a nice flat, orderly, but not quite the same as Thomas kept their flat. She had her shoes on a wooden rack by the door, and her fur-lined hooded coat was hanging by a hook. There were a few wooden sculptures that looked to be hand-carved, here and there about the place, and an ironic painting of a winter scene. Ironic in the sense that there was a blizzard outside at this very moment. In the end, Harry's eyes fell on his brother's letter again and the words of Henry Collins floated back to him.

"I didn't know there were four Henrys living under the same roof. So to speak," he said, turning back to Silna. Her shiny dark hair was braided out of her face, and he wondered not for the first time what it might feel like under his fingertips. Not that he thought of _that_ often, either. "I know Henry Peglar, and I've just now met Henry Collins...who else is there?"

Silna pursed her lips. "I think there's a Henry that shares a flat with somebody on the first floor. I'm not certain though. Henry Collins is a decent person, though I'm certain he smokes weed in his flat. Who's Henry Peglar?"

"Have you seen a couple around, with a bit of an age gap, older man with sad dark eyes and a young one with brown hair and blue eyes? Peglar's the younger man."

"A number of men match that description. I couldn't tell half the men in this building apart when I first moved in," Silna wrinkled her nose up in a way that had Harry giggling. "What?"

"When I first moved in, I listened to a man talk for ten minutes about Christian themes in classic art before realizing he wasn't Henry Peglar." Harry said between snickers. "And I still don't know his name!"

"John Irving, that was John Irving. Had to be."

"John? Well now that's at least two Johns I know of in this building. And two Thomas', and there's four Henrys. And here I thought Henry was an uncommon name nowadays."

"You _are_ an uncommon Henry," Silna said with an air of certainty, then, reaching over to poke his arm. "I only know of one Dr. Harry Goodsir, who studies sign language for fun and has at least three brothers who went through medical school, even if one dropped out to be a sheep farmer."

Her fingers felt warm against the wool of his jumper. Or maybe that was just his imagination. Harry's face certainly felt irrationally warm in the cold air of the darkened flat just now. He felt as shy as a schoolboy and twice as unsure of what to do next. He would very much like to do...to do...to do _something_ , though.

Tuunbaq leapt over onto the back of the sofa, then, hopping down and crawling into Harry's lap quite comfortably. Silna removed her hand from his shoulder and scratched behind her cat's ears, scooting closer. "He must think you're uncommon too," she said. "He's very choosy about who he'll let touch him."

"I noticed. He tried to bite a man on the third floor, um, but to be fair he was a bit...oily."

"Must be Cornelius Hickey," Silna hummed, scratching up under Tuunbaq's chin now. "Definitely the only Cornelius under the age of forty, what do you think?"

Harry couldn't quite think at all, really. Silna was so close he could smell her hair, (it smelled nice,) and he was admiring the planes of her face and the length of her lashes when she posed her question. "Uhh...yes?"

Silna turned her gaze from the cat to him, at his stammered reply, and oh dear lord were they even three inches apart? Her eyes were dark and clear, searching his face for...for...something, and Harry's own eyes fell down to her mouth. His heart thumped painfully behind his ribs. His palms were sweating and he tried to wipe them dry on the blanket as discreetly as possibly.

He could only assume that she was the one to close the gap and press her mouth delicately over his, although he still wasn't certain. A spark shivered up his spine at the contact, though, and his eyes fluttered shut, lashes brushing her face.

It wasn't a very long or deep kiss. Mostly because Tuunbaq grumbled about being pressed between them, prompting Silna to scoop him up and set him on the otherside of her on the sofa. Nonetheless, Harry's head was spinning and he brushed the tip of his tongue along the inner edge of his lip, tasting salt and something he couldn't quite describe but instinctively knew was _her_.

The second kiss, which he hesitantly initiated himself, cupping her cheek with one hand, was longer, deeper, and infinitely more dizzying.

Silna's lips curled into a smile against his as she pulled back, taking his hands in hers and tucking them under the blanket. "These are freezing."

"Ah...sorry?" Harry chuckled shyly, aware they were pressed so close their hands were resting on their pressed-together knees. "Cold hands, warm heart and such..."

"Very." She agreed, kissing the corner of his mouth and nuzzling against his cheek. Her nose was chilly too, but Harry didn't mind too terribly...until the knock on the door startled them both, Silna's nuzzle almost turning into a headbutt.

Harry helped her untangle herself from the blanket so she could answer the door, Tuunbaq taking advantage of the warm spot on the sofa to curl up in almost the minute Silna was crossing the room.

Harry's hands may have been cold, but his face burned brightly when Silna opened the door to show Mr. Blanky standing out there. He'd completely forgotten about the older man, he'd probably been checking for where Harry had gone with the cat.

"Excuse me, but has a young man been up here asking about a cat? It was down on the second floor and I was checking downstairs about the owner..." Mr. Blanky looked over Silna's shoulder, eyes locking with Harry's. And flicking over to Tuunbaq, curled up like a fluffy white cloud beside him. "Ah."

Mr. Blanky smirked at Harry before turning back to Silna. "Nevermind then. Have a pleasant day. The three of you."

Silna thanked him, and shut the door. Harry half-wished the sofa would swallow him up, and whatever form his expression took must've been amusing enough for her to start giggling when she turned around.

"Well..." he wished he could think of something clever or witty to say, but all Harry could manage was that one word. "Well."

"Well." Silna repeated, letting Tuunbaq keep his spot and plopping down on Harry's other side.

There was less room there, so she was curled up close to his side...oh, she probably did that on purpose. Harry carefully put an arm around her, which prompted Silna to tug the blanket over both of them cozily before winding an arm around his waist. Well, er, which is to say, well, wasn't this nice?

"You know, um, Thomas thought that we were dating before...well awhile ago."

"Why?" Silna asked.

"Oh, I don't know exactly. Assumptions, mostly. Um..." Harry cleared his dry throat. "I suppose that...it wouldn't be too odd now to actually ask you out on a proper date, would it?"

"Not odd, no. What do you think constitutes a proper date?"

"Well...perhaps after this blizzard clears up, we might go...somewhere, and...do something, and then I walk you back here to your door and kiss you goodbye. Er, goodnight."

Silna laid her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes. "Hmm. You'd have to walk all the way downstairs if you walked me to my door. I'll walk you to yours, and then you can explain to your roommate where we were while I head upstairs to mine."

Tuunbaq mewled, crawling over until he was stretched out across both of their laps, head nearer to Harry since he had a free hand for petting.

"He approves already, I think."

**Author's Note:**

> General fun facts I came across while writing this:
> 
> Greenland has it's own sign language, which is a combination of Inuit and Danish Sign Languages. I wanted to write about it but was having trouble finding resources at this time, so expect something with more prominent signing elements someday from me. :)
> 
> Real life!Fitzjames was co-owner of a cheetah with Lt. Henry LeVesconte, (until the cheetah mauled the hell out of Fitzjames, oops!) who served with him before and on the Franklin Expedition. Bro-friends or boyfriends, you decide!
> 
> Real life!Harry did have at least three brothers that went into medicine. The eldest did a bunch of pioneering research into cells, and was named after his grandfather and father, all three were John Goodsir. Robert and Archibald Goodsir were younger, and the latter attended a surgeon's college while the former never practiced much medicine after graduation. He did go on to be a sheep farmer and gold miner in Australia in New Zealand though. I don't know what his handwriting looked like and apologize to real life!Robert for this creative liberty.
> 
> At last count, there are four Henry/Harry's aboard the combined Terror-Erebus ships. I now firmly believe the reason all men were referred to by their last names in Victorian literature or otherwise is because THERE WERE ONLY SIX NAMES TO CHOOSE FROM I GUESS?!!! And then there's freaking _Cornelius_ over there being an absolute corn chip, even if that isn't his "real" name who the hell names their child Cornelius anyway?!


End file.
